From: Brett Paatsch (paatschb@ocean.com.au)
Date: Fri Jan 10 2003 - 00:07:58 MST
Dan wrote:
On Thursday, January 09, 2003 9:35 PM Brett Paatsch
> paatschb@ocean.com.au wrote:
> >> See "The Functions of the Family in the Great
> >> Society" by Steven Horwitz at:
> >> http://it.stlawu.edu/shor/Papers/Functions.htm
> >>
> >> What do you some of you think of
> >> the family in the context of
> >> transhumanism and Extropianism?
> >
> > I think family is a potent meme. And with
> > scientific validity we can adopt it, extend
> > it, and validly use it, as part of a pleasant
> > theme of inclusivity.
>
> How about new family forms in the context of future
> changes?
I have a broad mind about future family forms because I
come from a baseline perspective that *every* person living
on the planet is a more or less distant genetic relative of
*every* other person.
> What exactly do you mean by "scientific validity" here?
Bryan Sykes wrote a book the "Seven Daughters of Eve"
which purports, quite credibly I think, to use small changes in
mitochondrial DNA passed down the maternal line to show
that all people of European decent can trace their lineages back
to only 7 women, the oldest of which was 45,000 years ago. It
is also possible using the Y chromosome which can only be
inherited from the father to produce a paternal lineage map.
Sykes reckons once you get out of Europe and look at Africa
the "cradle of civilization" that the maternal lines go back much
much further. But one of his key findings was that there
appears to be no evidence of Neanderthal genes in modern
homo sapiens. This caused him and others to conclude that
various populations of homo sapiens did not emerge from or
breed successfully with Neanderthal populations, rather it looks
like there is likely to be an original African "Eve" from which we
are all descended.
So I reckon that as we are all genetically related, (to the best of
my knowledge), and genetics is pretty scientific, the argument
can be made that all homo sapiens are members of an extended
biological family as a matter of science fact not merely as a matter
of culture.
Against this background it would seem hard to oppose any
particular groups of people getting together however arbitrarily
and calling themselves family if they wish to. Scientifically they
are likely to be right.
> In Horwitz's
> paper, I think he's approaching family as a social phenomena.
> In other words, to some extent, he's assuming it exists and then
> analyzing it along various axes.
In fairness I've printed but not yet read Horwitz's paper so I'm
talking more generally and responding to you, not to it.
> > Especially now that it looks like homo sapiens
> > arose in one location in Africa rather than in
> > a number of places separately. Could work
> > very well against the darker memes that
> > pop up or are invoked from time to time.
>
> Such as? How?
Well its my contention, one that's often not shared so far as I
can tell, that some people outside of transhumanist circles in
particular may on superficial examination, or if encouraged to
think that way by mischief makers see transhumanism as an
elitist movement. Add the obvious interest in biological
enhancements etc and I think sadly it is all too easy for outsiders
to quite inappropriately draw connections between transhumans
that aspire to be better and other groups in history that aspired to
be better in far less wholesome ways. I don't want to revisit a
thread we've just had. Think of the arch fiend of the twentieth
century and his regime and fixation with eugenics and you know
both what I mean and what dark memes or spectres are able to
be summoned up against any group that looks like it might even
be thinking of drawing distinctions between transhumans and
mere humans. Seems to me, that exclaiming (metaphorically),
that transhumanists *know* we're all part of the same extended
family and we *know* this because of science not some fuzzy
cultural guff could be a nice counter-balancing meme of
inclusiveness with respect to people generally that can be tossed
back in response to charges of exclusiveness.
>
> What of the meme of "meme"? That powerful meme might
> have a few would be memeticists entranced.:)
Indeed it might :-) How would one tell do you think?
Brett
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:35:51 MST